Older worker receives state award

Longtime pharamist Dave Thompson, 66, who helped made sure a major tornado in 2004 not stop customers from getting their prescriptions, has been named Illinois' Outstanding Older Worker for 2007.

Gary L. Smith

When a tornado hit Granville in April 2004 and forced the closing of the only drugstore in Putnam County, longtime owner and pharmacist Dave Thompson immediately knew what had to be done.

Within about four days, he arranged to have a mobile office building set up in the downtown parking lot neighboring his store and equipped it to keep filling prescriptions for customers who had been depending on the Granville Drugstore for more than three decades.

For a year, while insurance issues were being sorted out and the new building was going up, Thompson and store employees worked shoulder to shoulder in the trailer to dispense medications and provide a basic assortment of other drugstore items.

"We worked it out so that people who couldn’t get up the steps (of the trailer) could get their prescriptions," Thompson said Wednesday. "They’d call ahead and drive up, and then we’d take it down the steps to them."

That was one of many memories that came to people’s minds Wednesday as Thompson, 66, was honored with a "Prime Time Award" as Illinois’ Outstanding Older Worker for 2007.

Thompson and his wife, Nancy, had been treated to a trip to Washington, D.C., for a banquet and meetings with officials, and a local reception was held Wednesday at the Putnam County Achievement Services’ Senior Center in Standard.

"I was very honored to be nominated. I never expected to get the award," Thompson said.

The awards have been given annually since 1998 to recognize people 65 and over who make valuable contributions to the workplace, said Janice Bramwell, regional director of Experience Works for Illinois and Missouri.

Thompson, a U.S. Marine veteran who was wounded in Vietnam, started the local drugstore in 1970. He had agreed to sell it shortly before the tornado to Marlin Weekley of Metamora, who also owns community drugstores in Metamora, Lacon, and Germantown Hills.

While the sale was delayed by the tornado, the new store that opened about a year later is now owned by Weekley. But Thompson continues to work there at least 20 hours a week, he said, dividing duties with fellow pharmacist Toni Lawley.

"I know that Dave is in the store every day that he’s in town," said Weekley, who attributed that partly to the obligation a pharmacist takes on in a small town. "You quickly come to realize it’s not really your store. It’s the community’s store."

Thompson became the third person from Putnam County to win the state award in 10 years. Hennepin public works employee Marion Kuehne received it in 1999, and the 2000 award went to Nadine Reasons, an outreach worker at the senior center.

"The smallest county in the state, and we’ve had three winners. Isn’t that great?" said Darcia Ferrari, director of the center and senior services in the county.

In Washington, D.C., Thompson met the man honored as this year’s oldest worker — a 101-year-old maintenance coordinator at an exposition center in Vermont. "I’ll never last that long. That’ll never happen," Thompson told a laughing crowd Wednesday.

But he was quick to emphasize later he has no plans to "slow down," as one friend asked him.

"I intend to work as long as I physically can. I still enjoy it," he said. "In fact, I think I’d be kind of lost without it."